The night sky in the Northern Hemisphere dazzles each summer with the astonishingly beautiful meteor shower, the Perseids.

Viewable from mid-July, their peak falls between Aug. 9 and Aug. 14, when stargazers can see up to 100 meteors an hour appearing across the whole sky, according to the National Space Centre.

While reading about the Perseids, I was reminded of a school field trip I took with my daughter Mason and her Grade 6 class this spring to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. As a lifelong stargazer and astronomy enthusiast myself, I was more than happy to tag along to learn about the scientific wonders of the universe.

Dr. Damian Pope (Perimeter’s Senior Manager of Scientific Outreach) and Dr. Niayesh Afshordi (astrophysicist and associate faculty member at Perimeter) fielded dozens of inquisitive questions from students about everything from supernovae, galaxies, and space dust to the formation of planets, stars and, especially, black holes.

Pope elaborated. “Black holes are regions of space and time, with such strong gravity that even light cannot escape from,” he said.

One student asked what happens to matter when it is sucked into a black hole. “We don’t know what exactly happens,” replied Afshordi. “Most objects are expected to be shredded into tiny microscopic pieces. Some speculate a portal to another baby universe, which forms when black holes form. Others speculate a new phase of matter.”

From quarks, dark matter and the possibility of traversable wormholes, to what happens if stars collide, the questions just kept coming. “The typical distance between stars is much bigger than their size, so the chance of them colliding is tiny,” said Pope.

Afshordi chimed in: “I’d imagine that the outcome of the collision of stars would be a bigger star. It’s an excellent question, though, and it goes to show there’s so much we still don’t know about the universe. That’s why I have a job here,” he said with a laugh.

While Afshordi, “dabbles in cosmology and the physics of gravity,” Pope combines his background as a researcher in the areas of quantum information theory and quantum foundations with a passion for communicating ideas to the wider community, like my daughters’ school.

Another child asked Pope, “Does the Perimeter Institute mostly focus on the bigger things like space and the universe, or do they mostly focus on microscopic things like atoms and subatomic particles?”

Pope replied: “We actually focus on both pretty equally, I would say. Because we have a whole kind of way to try to understand everything about the universe, from the biggest to the smallest, because they actually are all related. It’s interesting and kind of weird, but, sometimes the biggest things in the universe help us to understand the smallest of things.”

After visiting Perimeter Institute, the students were imbued with a new fascination for all things great and small. And it’s quite possible that some of them, having their curiosity piqued at Perimeter, will go on to become scientists and tackle some of the deepest, yet-unanswered questions of science.

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Marshall Ward is a visual artist and freelance writer. Email is welcome at marshall_ward@hotmail.com.